Макс Коллинз - Spree

“But you never had any real trouble with him,” Jon said, meaning Cole Comfort.

“None before now. But Jon — remember: he thinks we killed his brother.”

Bitterly, Jon said, “Even though we didn’t.”

“He also thinks we killed his two nephews, and he’s a little more justified on that score.”

“Shit, that’s right.” Jon shook his head.

Nolan knew that the kid had done his best to put this part of his life behind him, to forget about the darkness there.

“God help us,” Jon said, “we did kill one of them.”

“Not ‘we,’” Nolan said. “ I killed him.”

“Same difference.”

“In Cole Comfort’s mind, yes.”

Jon sighed. Weight of the world.

“Anyway, that’s what this is about,” Nolan said. “Revenge. Sherry may be dead already.”

Jon looked over with some panic back in his face. “But he’s set up a meet in a public place...”

“That may be to throw us off. He’s crazy. He may pull a shotgun from under the table and start blasting.”

“Oh, wonderful. And us unarmed.”

“No,” Nolan said. “There’s a .38 in the glove box. Get it.”

Jon opened the glove box and rustled around; under several maps and behind sunglasses and a flashlight he found a .38, a snub nose.

“Short barrel,” Jon said, checking to see if it was loaded, which it was. “Not your style.”

“Good enough for the car,” Nolan shrugged.

“What about you?”

He took his right hand away from the wheel and patted his gray leather topcoat, where his left arm met his shoulder.

“Is it going to come down to that?” Jon asked. “Shooting it out with some crazy old fucker in a bar?”

“Maybe,” Nolan said.

“And you think she may be dead already.”

“Yes.”

The Terminal Tap was a dump — a narrow dingy dark hole where stale, smoky air mingled with loud country western music; half of the usual neon signs and plastic beer signs were burnt out. So was most of the clientele, which seemed largely blue-collar, probably out-of-work blue-collar mostly, considering the Quad Cities economy. Comfort wasn’t there yet, at least not at a booth or table or at the bar. Nolan checked both the men’s and women’s cans, his gun in his overcoat pocket, and a woman fluffing her bouffant glared at him in the mirror and said, “Do you mind?”

Then Nolan and Jon took a back booth. A pockmarked barmaid of thirty-seven or so in a checked blouse and too much makeup and badly permed mousy brown hair took time out from chewing her gum to take their order. Nolan said, “Anything draw,” and Jon nodded the same.

“Okay,” she said, but Nolan grasped her arm. He held up a ten-dollar bill for her to see.

“What’s that for?” she asked. She had brown eyes. Pretty eyes under a shitload of makeup.

“This booth next to us, and this table,” Nolan said. “They’re empty.”

“Yeah,” she said, “right. So?”

“So keep it that way,” he said, and pressed the bill into her hand.

“Sure,” she shrugged, smiled briefly at Nolan. It wasn’t busy. She’d have no trouble keeping them clear.

The beers arrived in five minutes, and in ten so did Coleman Comfort.

He was a tall, lean, white-haired man with a craggy but almost handsome face. He was wearing a western-style denim jacket with yellow pile lining and an off-white Stetson-type hat with a rattlesnake band; he stood just inside the door, pulling off heavy gloves, stamping the snow off his cowboy boots, unsnapping the denim jacket, revealing a blue plaid shirt, looking for Nolan.

Nolan leaned out of the booth and crooked a finger.

Comfort grinned like a wolf and came to them, slowly, holding his fur-lined leather gloves in one hand, slapping them into the palm of the other.

Comfort stood next to their booth and gloated. His blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he said, “Nolan. Been a long time.”

The jukebox, which was in the corner just across from them, blared a Gatlin Brothers song.

“Sit down,” Nolan said, and motioned for Jon to slide over and make room. That put Jon and the snub nose to Comfort’s right, and Nolan and his long-barreled .38, which was in his left hand, under the table, directly across from Comfort.

“You might’ve ordered me a beer,” Comfort said, eyes narrowed, affecting a mock sad expression, like a friend just a little disappointed in another.

“Don’t fuck around,” Nolan said.

The smile returned, and it was colder than outside. “I’ll do what I please. It’s my goddamn show.”

The pockmarked barmaid came over and Comfort ordered a shot of whiskey. Old Grand-Dad, he insisted.

“Your little girl is just fine,” Comfort said, slapping the gloves nervously against the cigarette-scarred, graffiti-carved wooden tabletop between them. He was still wearing the rattlesnake-banded hat. “Tucked away in a quiet spot, safe and sound. I’m not going to hurt her.”

“Good. What do you want?”

He leaned back against the booth and gestured with a thick, gnarled hand. “You know, when my boy Lyle spotted you — he stopped by your fancy joint, you know, not so long ago — and told me he seen you, well, first thing I thought about was getting even.”

So that was it. You couldn’t live the straight life without something from the past, something bent, turning up now and then. And this time, it was a Comfort.

Nolan said, “I didn’t kill your brother.”

The smile faded. “Don’t shit me, Nolan. You ain’t in any position to shit me.”

Nolan knew trying to reason with a Comfort was like lecturing a tree stump, but he tried anyway. “Your brother and his son Terry tried to hijack a job of ours; they got killed trying, but it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Jon, who pulled the trigger. It was somebody else on that job, who’s dead, now. So you’re trying to settle a score that doesn’t need settling.”

“Let’s suppose you’re telling me the truth,” Cole Comfort said, his eyes slits. “Even so, it don’t justify you trying to heist Sam at his house that time; you killed Billy in the process, so don’t go talking about scores that don’t need settling.”

Billy Comfort. The redneck pothead who’d been poised to stick a pitchfork in Jon outside Sam Comfort’s rustic digs, when Nolan put two .38 slugs in him, killing him.

“Sam ripped off a partner of mine,” Nolan said, knowing he was fighting a futile battle, but trying anyway. “I was getting his money back for him.”

Comfort slammed a fist on the tabletop; the beers jumped, and Cole’s smile, his cool attitude, fell away to show the rage beneath. “Bullshit! It was no business of yours. You don’t steal from your own kind! It ain’t done. You don’t fuckin’ do it!”

The barmaid brought Cole his whiskey. He paid her, then gulped it down like medicine.

“A lot of people who worked with your brother, over the years,” Nolan said, “just flat out disappeared. The same is true of people who worked with you.”

Cole shook his head, his expression now stern. “I’m a businessman, don’t you forget it. I treat my business associates fair and square.”

The Statler Brothers were booming out of the jukebox.

“What do you want for the girl?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Astounded by all this, Jon entered the conversation: “Then why in hell did you take her?”

“Inducement,” Comfort said, looking at Nolan, not Jon.

“Inducement,” Nolan said.

“You see, we’ve had some bad blood, you and me — all three of us, matter of fact. But that’s bad blood under the bridge, far as I’m concerned.”

“Really.”

He folded his hands. “I have a business proposition for you, Nolan.”